


I will answer thy prayers (if thou wouldst drink of my life)

by Evandar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Community: hp_drizzle, Don’t copy to another site, Dream Sex, Dubious Consent, HP Drizzle Fest 2020, M/M, Underage Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:20:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25223770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: Instead of duelling Harry in the graveyard, Voldemort kisses him instead.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 21
Kudos: 645
Collections: HP Drizzle Fest 2020, Harry Potter, Tomarry 💜





	I will answer thy prayers (if thou wouldst drink of my life)

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks go to my beta, R, without whom I would be even more of a disaster. Credit for the title goes to Cradle of Filth: it's a line stolen from 'Malice through the Looking Glass'. ~~Yes, I know, my taste in music is awful.~~

The first time they kiss, the wind is blowing his hair into his face. Voldemort towers over him, one spidery hand cupping his jaw, sending shooting pain through Harry’s scar. He tries to get away, tries to squirm out of his grasp, but he’s still pinned to the tombstone and Voldemort is surprisingly strong for someone just resurrected. The wind is howling through the graveyard, stealing Harry’s cries of protest and pain and whisking them away.

And then Voldemort steals his first kiss.

His mouth is wide, his lips are thin and covered in scales; surprisingly soft and gentle. Harry sobs into it, strands of his hair catching in the tears rolling down his face. When Voldemort draws back, there’s a terrible smile stretched over his face.

“I can touch you now,” he says.

…

Harry dreams.

He walks down dark corridors, past archways that hiss with strange voices, and into a hall lined with glittering orbs stacked on shelves that soar into infinity. Possible futures that may or may not come to pass, glimpses through the tangled web of time. He stares up at a label - _LV & ?? (HP) – SCT to APWBD_ \- and lifts a pale wand. His scar blazes with cruel satisfaction as the entire shelf collapses; glass orbs shattering to sand and the ghosts of seers – some alive, some long dead – rise in a cacophony of whispers.

He catches just the hint of familiarity - _born as the seventh month dies_ \- before that too is lost. He does not attempt to listen more closely. The possibility the prophecy held is now irrelevant, destroyed. He refuses to be bound by something so _intangible_ when a far sweeter prize is within his grasp.

The thrill of victory is what wakes him.

…

He dreams of magic. Of dark robes pooling by a fireplace, and a long-fingered hand stroking down the back of a giant serpent. He dreams of glittering scales and summer nights.

He dreams of a shack that burns down after a ring is taken from under its floorboards. He dreams of a cave full of corpses and a letter signed _RAB_ \- dreams of fury and dread and malicious satisfaction when one of the drowned bodies stares back at him with a face that looks like Sirius. He dreams of a diadem gathering dust in Hogwarts’ halls, of his love for the castle – his first home – as she allows him within her walls once more. He dreams of the caverns under Gringotts, of a bleached-white dragon, and a cup made of gold.

He dreams of Lucius Malfoy screaming under his wand, cold fury jolting him awake.

He wonders if he should tell someone about them, the dreams. But his things are locked in the cupboard under the stairs for the fourth summer in a row and the letters he receives from his friends and godfather are uniform in their vagueness; apparently uncaring that he watched a friend die and a Dark Lord resurrected only weeks ago. He never told them about the kiss – hadn’t wanted to tell them of his shame and disgust and his terrible _longing_ for more - but he can’t help but think that it wouldn’t have changed anything if he had. They _want_ him like this: cut-off and miserable. They want him to stay where he is and ignore all the signs that there’s more going on than what’s on the Muggle news. They want him ignorant. They want him out of sight.

So, he tells no one. He returns to sleep and _dreams_.

He dreams of old books and slowly turning pages, of plots and schemes and ideas for new laws. He dreams of summer rites and old magic; of Voldemort standing in a field of barley in broad daylight, shrouded in black and with a scythe in his hand. He dreams of warm darkness, of his hands clenching in silk sheets as talons scrape across his thighs and up-turned arse; of a forked tongue in his mouth, around his cock, _inside of him_.

He dreams of promises he only half-remembers, and he wakes in the mornings with soiled sheets and a sense of resignation.

…

Dementors come to Little Whinging only to be chased away by a Patronus shaped like a basilisk. Harry stares at his wand in horror, something like betrayal bubbling up the back of his throat. His stag is gone, replaced by an echo of something he doesn’t want to think about: a kiss in a graveyard and a wicked smile; fine scales glimmering in firelight and eyes the colour of arterial spray. He keens with the loss.

Mrs Figg interrupts: another betrayal. One that stings deeper and colder, and he hisses soft curses as he hauls Dudley back to his feet. His cousin isn’t Kissed, just catatonic, and he can’t help but wonder what Precious Dinky Diddydums could _possibly_ have suffered to have such a strong reaction.

He’s expelled. He’s not; he’s going to trial instead. He’s to stay where it’s safe, which, under the circumstances, seems to be approximately fucking nowhere. He rests his forehead against the glass of his bedroom window and stares out into the dark.

A shadow moves. A figure steps out from between two, identical suburban houses. He reaches up to crack his window open as wide as it will go, and he leans out into the stifling-hot night. 

Voldemort stares up at him. He’s wraith-thin and barefoot on the pavement, haloed by the streetlight. His scales gleam under the artificial glow.

 _“Kept safe by your mother’s blood,”_ Dumbledore had said once, when Harry had asked to stay at Hogwarts during the summer months; had babbled about the cupboard and the beatings and, please sir, could he not stay? But Voldemort has his blood now, has had it since June when Pettigrew dripped it into a cauldron. 

Voldemort raises a hand. He beckons.

Climbing out of his window and down the drainpipe is a novel experience. He feels like the Muggle hooligan that his relatives claim he is. But his Firebolt is locked in his old cupboard under the stairs, and with seven deadbolts locking him in, Harry has no chance of opening his bedroom door without magic. 

He’s already been expelled-or-not once tonight. He doesn’t want to push it – not that it stops him from taking his wand with him to meet the Dark Lord. To leave it behind would be all kinds of stupid, regardless of the…gentleness Voldemort showed at their last meeting. Despite the dreams where he spreads Harry open or lays the whole world at his feet.

“You didn’t send the Dementors, did you,” Harry says. It’s not a question. He’s had his doubts about it ever since he was given room to think.

“The Ministry,” Voldemort says. “Dumbledore has provided you with a new circle of enemies, eager to tear down the pedestal of the Boy-Who-Lived.”

“The pedestal they put me on,” Harry states, his voice flat.

He’d known, of course. He’d known the moment Crouch was Kissed, when Fudge stormed out of the hospital wing calling him a liar and a madman. He’d _known_ that the Minister who “had to be _seen_ to act” would never be a capable war-time leader – if war came at all. He’d known that Dumbledore wouldn’t keep his name out of it. The celebrity that had built up around Harry during the years he’d spent in a Muggle cupboard was too powerful a propaganda tool for the Headmaster to ignore, even if he could have. After the Triwizard Tournament, there was no chance of Harry slipping into obscurity.

“Come away with me,” Voldemort says. He stretches out his hand. His spidery fingers are tipped with too-familiar claws. “Come away, and I swear to you, you will be free of this.”

If the Dursleys had allowed such things as fairy tales in the house, he might have been more cautious. Even so, Voldemort’s proposition sounds like either bliss or an invitation to his own funeral. Harry studies that outstretched hand, glances up into blood-red eyes and discovers flecks of other reds that gleam like rubies in the light.

“All of my things are still inside,” he points out.

…

Voldemort watches as he gathers his things. He uses wandless magic to open Harry’s cupboard and then Harry’s bedroom, and he says not a word at the state of either of them. He’s an anachronistic ghoul – something alien and unholy and completely at odds with the Dursleys’ ideals of Muggle suburbia. It’s shockingly glorious to witness, and Harry has to smother laughter at the thought of inviting Voldemort to drink tea with him here – at the kitchen table, with his spider-hands curled around Aunt Petunia’s finest china.

Still, he’s grateful that the Dark Lord says nothing. He’s grateful that the Dursleys are asleep, although a tiny part of him feels the cold swell of Voldemort’s fury at the sight of his cupboard and the cat-flap in his bedroom door and wishes that they weren’t. The Dursleys wouldn’t survive, he knows, and he feels a perverse sense of satisfaction knowing that Voldemort, of all people, would raise his wand in his defence. 

For Dumbledore and his benevolent bullshit about the sanctity of his mother’s blood, Harry feels nothing but bitterness.

“Come and find me,” Harry whispers to Hedwig as he frees her from her cage. “Be careful.” She nips gently at his finger before swooping out of his open window; he watches her go, a pale shadow against the sky, before turning to face the Dark Lord.

Lord Voldemort has been remarkably patient. He’s been pretending to be interested in Dudley’s second-hand books – in excellent condition, given that Harry’s cousin is barely literate. Harry’s read them all, had even enjoyed some of them, but watching Voldemort studying their spines is almost too much for him to handle. The bare bulb that hangs from the ceiling casts deep shadows in the hollows of his cheeks, highlights the fine patterns of his scales. 

He’s as beautiful as he is terrifying, Harry thinks, and feels far less betrayed by his Patronus than he did three hours ago.

He doesn’t ask where they’re going. Instead, he allows the Dark Lord to take him by the hand and lead him from the house in silence.

…

The second time they kiss, the wind is blowing Harry’s hair into his face.

They’re standing on an immaculate lawn, in front of a manor house high up on a hill, with a view overlooking a very familiar graveyard. Wherever they are is colder and windier than Little Whinging, and the wind that buffets them stings with salt and smells strongly of the sea. He sways a little on his feet – Apparition, like most methods of Wizarding transport, is _utter shit_ \- and Voldemort slides an arm around his waist to hold him upright.

Harry goes rigid. His body turns cold, then hot, and he peers up at Voldemort with something like trepidation. The older wizard is watching him carefully, with much the same, strange expression as he’d had in the graveyard – as if Harry is something precious that he’s not entirely sure what to do with. 

Harry swallows.

He lets go of his trunk and turns in Voldemort’s hold, facing him properly. The man is _tall_. So tall that even when Harry stands on his tiptoes, he still has to tug the Dark Lord down by the collar of his robes. Voldemort comes willingly, pulling him close; he’s painfully thin under his robes, but just as strong as he’d seemed when he was first resurrected.

Harry leans in, only to be rewarded with a mouthful of his own hair. Voldemort laughs at him softly - the high, eerie sound almost like a giggle - and he brushes Harry’s hair away, talons scraping lightly over his scalp. Harry shivers. He leans in again and kisses that wide, scaled mouth; parts his lips for that forked tongue to coil around his own. His scar sparks with pleasure that leaves him moaning, twisting his hands in Voldemort’s robes, trying to pull him closer.

“Touch me,” he whispers, and even though the wind once more steals his pleas away, he knows Voldemort hears them.


End file.
